Exam

I really really love how Massey sets their exams questionsm it's so relevant, and it really test on how you can apply the knowledge you've learnt... but it's so freaking hard!

For instance
"you are making a canned pet food and wish to ensure the chunks of meat remain intact through long retort cookign cycle, what's the technological function that needs to be performed, and identify the suitable additives to be used"

See with the same material... from UoA the quesitons will be something like

"write an essay on the functionality of hydrocolloids and how it can be applied in a food system"

so different!

Photoshoot

In response to c's msg on my tagboard... THIS photoshoot.

Each year the 4th year's pd products gets put onto a Massey calendar to promote their Food tech degree. This year is no exception

So there's our wonderful product! looking very flash if i say so myself~

Us starring at the product.. lost for what we can do.

First we tried to look intimidating.. and of course me being me.. that didn't work out too well.

Then we pretend to 'study' our product...

Then we tried some darn weird poses, I swear we look like a human pyramid.. almost

We tried to 'enthusiastically' posed with our product.. of cousre being the shortest one there, the product was covering my face *blushes*

Then came the bread. you can' treally tell, but those breads were actually moudy! thank goodness we covered it up with our spread. :P

And with that.. after 2 presentations and 2 reports that we polisehd off today, that concludes the paper for the year... I can't believe it! It's been a loooong hard year's worth of work, but in the end I think it's all worth it!!! The guy's calm and relax nature makes everything so easy. I can seriously say we are the only group that haven't had a single argument throughout the year. We just debated, take general consensus, and that's it. sweet!! Kinda a bit sad that we didn't have a proper farewell today, but we had 1 group member missing, and it was late, everyone just wanted to leave after the report was printed. Who knows when will be the next time we'll see each other again. Don't want to think about that right now~ All I wanted to say was.. I had fun, It's be great.. more than great.. it was excellent. We made a product that I was really proud of.... and this will be somethign I'll remember for the rest of my life.. The story of the development of a 3NutButter

Cruuuuuuuuuuuunch crunch

Hahah haven't update for a while. Been in crunch mode like crazy, but at least things are ALMOST there.

Have HUGE as presentation tmr to Watties ppl~~~ wish me luck.... and my last wisdom tooth decided this is the PERFECT opportunity to start pokings its head out. And then somehow it start kinda makign my top wisdom tooth biting on my cheek... so now i have a huge ulcer. HAHAHA which is really excellent because when it talk, it sound like there's a lump in my mouth.. wait.. there IS a lump in my mouth. HAHAHA

Oh well.. at least things are almost there ^____^

My first pilot plant production run

Baking 24kg worth of nuts took 3 hours straight!

Just weighing out the roasted nuts into 6 batchs is a daunting task. Look at Rupert (white) calculating hard and Jay (blue)..well... inspecting the nuts.

Grinding the nuts was straining on the machines, our large-scale blender surrendered due to overheating after struggling 3 bucket full of nuts.

So we had to resort to the DISTINTEGRATOR. It is actually really great, it produced really smooth nut butter, only trouble is it can't seem to disintegrate the whole batch, large chunks keep sticking to the sides that we have to constantly stirr into the mix (What Rupert is doing in the photo).

I got the easy job to test out the viscosity of our spread.

After 10 hours, seeing our spread in one huge container, we coudln't be happier
That is until we eventually realize filling the jars would eventually take us 30 mins.

The beginning

The txt msg I received yesterday

"beautiful baby boy born 12:14, 8 pound 4."


^_____________^

My groupmate is officially a daddy~~~ so happy for him~~

Freaky

Before I start this, I just want to assure ppl, especially to Danny that I am currently safe and sound in my flat. So there's nothign to worry about, coz nothign happened! I wanted to txt you earlier, but I didn't want you to worry (coz i know you'll).

I had early class this morning, and as I dont' normally catch the early bus, I went a bit earlier just in case if I miss it. While waiting for the bus, I was had my fone out coz *cough* was playing sudoku. Then I saw this guy walked across the road, and was askign me questions.

It was a windy day, I coudln't hear him very well, I had to ask him to repeat it 3 times, by the third time he asked me, he was literally 10cm away from me.

He asked me where's the nearest pub. I was there thinkign, omg, which pub woudl open at 7:30am, but I told him, and gave him directions. Then he started chatting. AGain the wind was really strong so i coudln't hear him very well, but he was talkign about how he's really wasted (makign me think, omg, why the heck woudl you watn to go drink some more), then he was on about "straight up" which I thought he was on about what he was drinkign last night.

Then he started askign why I was standing there, and I said, I was waiting for the bus to go to Massey, he told me that he's going to Massey too, to the dairy farm site, and he asked me why take the bus, how far it is. And i said.. 40mins walk, i have to take the bus, or else i'll be late for the class. And then he keep telling me how i have nothing to worry about, and i shoudl walk... By then I was getting a bit annoyed, and was constantly looking on the distance for signs of the bus.

Then.. he freaking touched my bum! this was followed by him keep telling me "why dont' we go and have some fun" and immediately, alarms was raised in my mind. All those news article danny sent me about rapiest in Palmy was flashign through my mind, I was.. afraid. Then logics kicked in, it was 7:20am in the morning, there were constant traffic where I was standing, not a lot, but for sure every 30s, at least a car will drive pass. The bus should be there within the next 5 mins at the latest. I knew i couldn't outrun him if i had to, so my best options were to keep calm, not ticked him off into doing anythign rash, and more importantly, if i Had to.. the main street was 2 mins run away. I was bankign on the bus coming, someone else coming to wait for the bus.

For the next 3 mins, there were numerous strategic back step to keep my 1.5 m from him. And me constantly telling him NO I HAVE TO GO TO A LECTURE!. Then, I got really fed up with his insistence that I told him "look, if you watn to go to the pub, it's that way, have a nice day" and to my relieve... he walked away. I wasn't sure if it's coz of what I said... but 5 second later, this other student came and waited for the bus with me.

That... was.... a really freaky experience. And yes for all I knew he could've really just wanted to 'have some fun' but still, the possibility of being attacked was so overwhelming. But at the end of the day... I am just glad nothing happened, and that I had 3 scoops of ice cream during lab to comfort myself with.

Presentation day

Today is the first day of presentation for th 4thyear individual projects, I went and showed my support. There are some really interesting projects, ranging from developing products with reduced salt and no MSG, detecting milk damage, water treatment options investigation, and gluten free bread. Particularly, one of them was on detecting campylobacter on real time pcr. I know that girl quite well, she has repeated told me that food techi have vertially no background on campylobacter and PCR, so she had real trouble preparing her presentation for an audience who just didnt' have a clue.

Which come to a point, because I did, I knew what she was talkign about, admittedly not as good as Miss Hui-who-majors-in-biotech. But the point is... so what if they have no idea, in the food industry, unless if you end up doing some micro quality stuff, you'll probabily never run into basic bio methods such as PCR or what not. At days like this, I can't help but thinking if the choice I made 4 years ago was the right one.

Yesterday I had one of the most enjoyable lecture on ice cream. It was NOTHING like the version laurie gave us last year. Things that I had wondered about during his lecture and the field trip were now explained. They even went into details on the difference between premium ice cream and normal ice cream. And the lectuerer HAD a lot of experiences with ice cream and he could tell us a lot of standard practices based on his experience. It was really brilliant.

We had entire 4 weeks worth of lectures on colloids (sry this is gonna be a bit technical). The only thing that I've learn in Auckland was laurie's *cough* wonderful tables of different emulsifiers, and a chemmat lectuere mentioning things on laplace pressure. But what I got this year, was soooo much more indepth, and I can go on and on and on about this, but I will not bore you with the details.

My course coordinator half jokingly said to me on our 2nd meeting "didn't you wish you were here" I replied him "things would've been a lot different" and indeed it would've. I would not have many of the friends that i treasure, woudl've met Danny at all... so how can I say that things would've been better right?

All I am hoping is that I will be equipped with more food techi info that AU students lacks, and more general bio info that Massey students lacks, that makes me an unique, all-rounded food technologist that employers will want to hire!!! HIRE ME PLZ!!!!

The perfect job!

I've got this forward mail from one of the lectueres today

"XXX

See attached a fixed term contract for 6 months to cover maternity leave for XX. It is working for me at XXX site at Ncompany.

This would be an ideal opportunity for someone who hasn’t got the best grades and/or interview technique to prove themselves in the role. At which point with the continuous turnover we have in tech positions they would probably easily find a permanent position."

HAHA isn't it just brilliant the way she advertise it? :P OMG! ok WHILST it's nice that she's giving ppl who probabily doesn't look that impressive on a cv a chance to work? does it not make that role very... unimportant. And more importantly, she expects whoever get this job can easily find a permanent position due to the HIGH TURNOVER, now which means no only is this job unimportant, it's so boring that ppl always want to leave. Hm..... makes you think doesnt' it. hehehe I'll certainly wont' be applying... well.. for one thign it's not in auckland, and it' a process tech job. HAHA.

Quality paper reflection

I just handed in my last quality assignment on Friday. Feel great, that's 1/4 of my course done, officially. The last assignment was a reflection assignment on what i've learnt etc (don't ask me how the heck the lecturer is gonna mark that).

I choose to do the Quality paper because my course coordinator said "looking at what you've done, you never done anythign on quality systems, so I think it'll be quite a good paper to do". Granted I have vowed not to get into QA or QC stuff just having worked as a QC technician for almost 2 years part time allow to me to discvoer that, that is not where my passion lies. But it did gave me I guess curiousity to what Is quality, and how it is maintained.

The quality paper was certainly intersting, for starters is part extramural which means NO LECTURES! and since I am an internal student, I get the privilege to have a meeting with the lectuerer weekly to discuss my progress. All I can say is. thank goodness for those meetings, or else I'll never have the self-displine to do a bit of study every week. But most importantly, it is really not close to ANYTHING i've done before. For once it wasn't about soaking up all the information, it wasn't about regurgitating, it was all about critical thinking, and what I think is right. I seriously have major headaches when I have to do quality assignments, just on the basis of how hard I had to think. And at the end of the course, while I can't say still that quality is somehting I like, I really feel like I've learnt a heck of a lot. This just to showed.. 2 years experience at AQ taught me nothing about quality systm. just as well as i was just a technician.

Strange Stuff Cont.

Hehehe Just thought I'll keep you guys updated on what I end up doign with the last 1/3 of my purply cauliflower

Cauliflower and cheese sauce.

And actually.. it wasn't bad at all~~~ I guess cauliflower and cheese is the perfect marriage.

Strange Stuff

So the other day, I went to the morning market and saw this ....

A Very Very PURPLY cauliflower.... I just couldn't resist to buy it and try what it's like. I picked this up for $1 too! what a bargain!

So.... I massacred the cauliflower, to make myself a nice stir fry with chicken.

To my amusement, the purple colour intensified during the cooking process, and what I was left with was a very purply cauliflower indeed.

And dinner was served.! And I am sure you are all dying to know what it tasted like. It's kinda a cross between a broccoli and a cauliflower, but a bit tough. I guess I didn't stir-fry it for long enough. But this meal have taught me a very important lesson! What ppl say about you eat with your eyes? TOTALLY true! THe cauliflower was just normal tasting, but by the end, I was gettign an overdoes of all the purply bits, especially when you associate purple like that with poison, it did make it hard to swallow towards the end.

So I've learned, and made tomato pasta with it. the redness really mask the colour well. But the trouble is.. what shoudl I do with the rest 1/3 of the cauliflower... hm.....